


before you go

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: (please let them be happy), 1am rambling rubbish, Angst, BACK ON MY BULLSHIT, Boys kissing boys but not nearly enough, Hahahah what's a dialogue, I will die for Them 299393 times (unless ben gets there first), Jammy, KFAM: 89, M/M, Pals bein' pals, Really Bad Metaphors, Rights for Jack Wright, So much angst, Spoilers, The Void, UHHH idk what this is, i have a lot of feels about sammy stevens and jack wright, needless amounts of angst, perfect angels, seriously, sunshine boy, the sad one, they're bad, vague stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 23:06:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19485862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: Jack wishes he could pinpoint the moment he falls in love.(but Sammy doesn't listen anymore.)





	before you go

He’d stopped listening.  
Not that that was unusual by that point. Sammy used to hold onto every word that fell out of Jack’s mouth, study every syllable with the kind of reverence most people can only wish for, and tuck them safely in his heart for safekeeping. He could recall almost every conversation they’d ever had, describe in detail the way the words echoed in his mind. He could paint pictures of every smothered laugh, every half-smile, every stolen kiss in the dark. He knew every inch of his fiance’s body, could talk in length about the precise movements Jack would make correlating to each part of his arm you would touch.

He took notice of everything. He was mesmerised by the rhythm of their life together.

It’d been months since that’d been the case though.  
It started slowly.  
He’d spend too long staring out the window, or focus for a little too long on the page of the novel he was reading. He’d always respond. Half-heartedly or vaguely, but there was never a meanness to it. He just wasn’t interested. Not in things that could potentially take Jack away from him. Figuratively, or literally.  
  
Jack knows he’s stopped listening now.

He’d rather stay over-time at a meeting and have to cancel dinner plans for the third time that week. He’d rather present Jack with an eyeroll and a half-assed excuse about a girl at work who needed his ear. He’d rather pretend everything wasn’t falling apart. He’d rather shake off the questions and concern, and pretend that nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever wrong.  
  
He’d memorise rote responses, as though Jack were just some persistent caller, who wouldn’t shut up when they needed to cut to a commercial.  
  
It was just…

  
They’d argued ten, fifteen times about this.  
  
_You don’t understand!_ One or both of them would yell.  
_You’re not even trying!_

 _How can you care more about a place than a person? More than me?_  
  
I love you. I love you.  
Please don’t leave.

**~~I gave up everything for you, you can’t just leave.~~ **

To Jack though, it was so much more than a place. A feeling that was so much more than this.  
He loved Sammy. He loved love, and he loved Sammy, and he loved the way Sammy made him feel.  
He loved holding his hand, and laughing at his dumb jokes, and teasing him in public until he blushed and looked away so people wouldn’t know there was something more to it than two pals bein’ pals.  
(How could people not know?)  
  
Jack was sunshine, and Sammy was the bitter cold of a rainy day, and somehow together they made a multi-coloured flash across a tired sky.

But nobody seemed to notice.  
Maybe they just didn’t _want_ to notice.

Jack was scared of the way that hiding made him feel. Scared of the way Sammy’s face twisted when he was on the radio. When he was _Shotgun Sammy._ It was fake, of course. A way to compromise himself in public in order to be who he wanted to be in private.  
Sammy was everything everybody wanted him to be. Knowing that hurt, because maybe Sammy was faking it for him, too. Because he wanted Sammy. He wanted him so fucking much that it pained him every second they were apart. Every second they had to pretend they didn’t care. Weren’t in love.

Maybe, though. Maybe Sammy was just being what Jack wanted him to be.  
(It was hard to think that with Sammy’s hand in his lap, or his lips on his ear, and his head on his shoulder. But still.)

Because Jack was athletic, and Jack was kind. Jack was maybe a little too neurotic, but he tried wholeheartedly to be **good,** just to be good. **  
** He loved every person and every thing he came into contact with, whether they deserved it or not. He was so, so excitable. When he wanted something, he wouldn’t stop until he had it. Whether that thing were good grades, a tiny house with a white picket fence, or Sammy Stevens.

He hadn’t wanted to leave, not really. He was just so afraid.  
Afraid of missing out on the bigger picture. Afraid that Sammy would just leave him anyway. Afraid of people finding out that he wasn’t the person they’d always believed him to be.  
  
  
He wanted to be safe, and happy and whole. He was never going to be those things in The Big City.  
But a place like King Falls?  
Maybe they could be happy there.  
  
A place that accepted Apparitions and Skin Walkers and Kingsie’s surely would accept a couple of dudes who happened to be in love?

(Sammy was supposed to think so, too.)  
  
He figured he was imagining the call. The tug at his heart, the ache in his stomach. The voice in his head screaming that he didn’t belong here.  
He just… wanted to belong.

Sammy found everything so easy. Being the person he needed to be. Jack just…couldn’t. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t Sammy.

He wanted Sammy to come. Begged him like they’d begged Lily all those years ago.  
She’d reassured him on the phone that Sammy wouldn’t let him down. Sammy never let anybody down.  
  
Sammy had let him down.

* * *

  
Jack wishes he could pinpoint the moment he fell in love with Sammy. Felt like he had to take a picture and frame it, or else it might slip away.

He knew the moment he’d admitted it though. To himself, and to the world. Even if they didn’t know it.  
  
_Love is all you need._

It had come after a drunken conversation. They took care not to be alone together much. Had noticed the way their eyes seemed to linger more than was strictly necessary. Noticed the way their hands kept brushing against one another. Noticed the way they spoke to each other – voice just a little softer than when talking to Lily, or anybody else.

Their voices weren’t soft that day, though. Sammy was angry. Sammy was often angry, but had no real way to express it other than casual self harm via alcohol consumption, something Lily was all too happy to indulge him in.  
  
Jack had dutifully come along, and when Lily had flittered off around midnight to kiss some jock she vaguely knew, Sammy had cried.  
  
Jack had assumed.. Well. Something else.

He didn’t expect the flutter in his chest, or to be monologuing on the radio about the importance of loving yourself the following day. But Sammy needed to hear it.  
  
He needed to hear it, and he needed it to come from Jack.

_Love is all you need._

They’d kissed in broad daylight, at a park behind Sammy’s house that day. The first, and only time they’d kissed in public.

Jack couldn’t remember the conversation.

The feeling of Sammy’s lips on his own had eclipsed every moment surrounding it. He couldn’t hear the birds and he couldn’t feel the cold. He could feel the **thump** _thump_ of his heartbeat, and Sammy’s smile on his face.  
His hands had clung so tightly to the chain on the swing he was precariously perched on that his knuckles had turned white.  
  
Sammy had laughed at that – a different laugh to usual. It felt free. Unguarded. Happy.  
  
Jack hadn’t realised Sammy wasn’t happy until that laugh.

He hoped he never wouldn’t be again.  
  
(Sammy started to love himself too. Which had been Jack’s intention, really. If Sammy could love himself like Jack loved Sammy, then it would be okay that Sammy didn’t love Jack. Except. Well. Sammy did love Jack. And wasn’t that somethin’?)  
  
  
Until the moment Jack realised that maybe love wasn’t all he needed.

Jack needed stability. He needed to stop lying to himself. Lying to everybody around him. He needed somebody who loved him and listened to him and would hold his hand in public. He needed somebody who believed his stories and who believed in him.  
  
He knew Sammy was capable of that. Not here though. Not here.  
  
He begged.  
  
He begged.  
  
He was going to leave. He wasn’t going to leave.  
  
He was going to leave, but only if Sammy left too.  
  
Except then he left anyway.  
  
Not the way he planned to.  
  
One minute he was standing the in doorway, picturing their life apart and wishing with all his heart that that never had to be a reality.  
  
The next minute it **was** a reality.

**~~And his life was Void in more ways than one.~~ **

* * *

****

King Falls was nothing like what Jack had imagined. But then, he’d never really been to King Falls.  
Not really.  
  
He could see the town. He could see the people.  
Sometimes he was in a radio station, and sometimes he was in a library.  
Sometimes he sat in Rose’s and ate pancake puppies.  
Sometimes he watched Ben Arnold argue with Greg Frickard, and that meant something to him.  
  
Sometimes he wandered Perdition Wood, and sometimes he was at Lake Hatchenaw  
Sometimes he watched The Dark take off his mask and kiss his boyfriend, laughing softly, peacefully.  
Sometimes he watched the Sherriff chase several of the William’s boys, a bemused expression on his face.  
  
Sometimes he just sat in the sunshine and breathed.  
  
But Jack couldn’t see Sammy.  
  
He could hear his voice, sometimes. On the radio maybe.   
He saw traces of him in the town. Blurred photographs on Ben’s fridge. His messy signature on his new contract. A broken tv. A ring on the bathroom counter. Leftover overnight oats laying next to his sister as she slept fitfully on his couch.

But there was something.

Some kind of Darkness that blocked him out. Punished him. Refused to give him the only thing he wanted in this empty, broken world. ~~(Sammy **Fucking** Stevens.)~~

Jack had wanted to be away. To be free from a world that didn’t want him. To be in a place that accepted him for exactly who he was. To be in King Falls and away from all the things that had hurt.

Jack wanted to feel something, anything besides the numbness that filled his every waking moment.

To tell Sammy every single day for the rest of their lives that love. His love. Their love. Was all that they needed.  
  
But Sammy wasn’t listening anymore.

* * *

Some day soon, Jack will wake up in a small room with yellow walls under a soft red comforter. He won’t be covered in shadows. His own voice will come out of his mouth. He’ll move his arm and it’ll respond the way that arms are supposed to.  
He’ll feel the sunshine streaming through the window. Really feel it. Not in the dull way he thought he had been for the last five years.  
  
He’ll sit up and look around and see Sammy.  
Sammy will smile, and Jack will pause and feel everything all at once.  
  
(Because love can bring anyone home.) 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, it's very much appreciated! i love them more than life itself, and i wish i could do them justice. (and one day they will be happy, i hope it's soon. fingers crossed.)


End file.
